The Scholar's Armchair

Dr. John Burton
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Great minds on the greatest ideas: Conversations with scholars on their area of expertise for a general audience. Less like a lecture, more a conversation with an expert. Check us out on YouTube!

  1. 3d ago

    The Radical Quakers: How a Dangerous Faith Survived | Dr Erica Canela

    Direct access to God. Women in the pulpit. A refusal to bow to religious and social authority. The first Quakers challenged seventeenth-century England—and paid a heavy price.Historian Dr Erica Canela joins me to discuss her book, Zealous: A Darker Side of the Early Quakers. We explore how the devastation of the British civil wars helped give rise to a radical faith, and why its earliest followers were so different from the quiet, peaceful image familiar today.Among the questions we address:• Why did Quakers believe they could encounter God without priests—and why was that so threatening?• What opportunities did Quakerism open up for women?• Why did ministers such as Richard Baxter oppose the movement so fiercely?• What happened when James Nayler rode into Bristol in a scene evoking Christ’s entry into Jerusalem?• How do we distinguish religious persecution from prosecution for deliberately breaking the law?• What did Humphrey Smith’s missionary calling cost his wife and children?• How did Quakers survive when so many other radical movements faded away?• Where does courageous faith become destructive zeal?From fierce pamphlet battles to imprisonment and martyrdom, this is a story of belief, authority and the human cost of certainty.📖 Erica’s book: Zealous: A Darker Side of the Early Quakers — Pen & Swordhttps://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Zealous-A-Darker-Side-of-the-Early-Quakers-Hardback/p/53269🌐 Erica Canela’s websitehttps://ericanela.co.uk/Subscribe for more conversations exploring history through the people who lived it.#Quakers #EricaCanela #BritishHistory #ReligiousHistory #EnglishCivilWar

  2. Oct 25

    How Shakespeare's Sonnets Turned Love Poetry Upside Down | Prof Roland Weidle

    Shakespeare’s sonnets are love poems—but they challenge almost everything we might expect love poetry to do. In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I’m joined by Professor Roland Weidle of Ruhr University Bochum, author of A Comprehensive Guide to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, to explore how Shakespeare transformed the sonnet tradition.We discuss why the poems resist a straightforward biographical reading, how passion and intellectual argument work together, and whether poetic praise can ever escape the poet’s own ambitions. Roland also recommends sonnets to explore and explains why closer reading can deepen our enjoyment of these extraordinary poems.Professor Roland Weidle at Ruhr University Bochum: https://www.es.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/es/mitarbeiter/rweidle.html.deA Comprehensive Guide to Shakespeare’s Sonnets — published by The Arden Shakespeare / Bloomsbury:https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/comprehensive-guide-to-shakespeares-sonnets-9781350382848/Subscribe to The Scholar’s Armchair for weekly conversations about literature, history, philosophy and culture.#Shakespeare #ShakespearesSonnets #Poetry

  3. Oct 18

    Who was the Author of Wuthering Heights? | Prof Deborah Lutz on Emily Brontë

    Who was the real Emily Brontë? How did a seemingly quiet young woman living in a Yorkshire parsonage create Wuthering Heights, one of the wildest, darkest and most extraordinary novels in English literature? And why does Emily Brontë remain such an enigmatic figure nearly two centuries after her death? In this episode of The Scholar's Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Deborah Lutz, Professor of Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Penn State University, about her remarkable new biography, This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë. Drawing on previously inaccessible manuscripts, historical records and the material world of the Brontë household, Lutz brings us closer to the elusive woman behind Wuthering Heights. Together, we explore Emily's extraordinary imagination, her relationship with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, the fictional worlds they created as children, and the importance of the Yorkshire moors, animals, weather and the natural world to her writing. We also discuss how Emily combined the ordinary demands of domestic life with an astonishingly rich imaginative existence, and how her fascination with freedom, imprisonment, death and the supernatural shaped both her poetry and her only novel. Above all, we ask whether the familiar image of Emily Brontë as a solitary, mysterious genius has prevented us from understanding the woman and the remarkable artist she really was. ABOUT THE GUEST Deborah Lutz is the George and Barbara Kelly Professor in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Pennsylvania State University. She is an acclaimed scholar of Victorian literature and the author of several books, including The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects and Victorian Paper Art and Craft. Her latest book, This Dark Night, offers a fascinating new perspective on the life, imagination and literary achievement of Emily Brontë. BOOK AND AUTHOR LINKS 📖 This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë — Bloomsbury Publishing (UK): https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/this-dark-night-9781399417082/ 🎓 Deborah Lutz — Penn State University: https://english.la.psu.edu/directory/dzl5730/ JOIN THE CONVERSATION If you could sit down with Emily Brontë and ask her just one question, what would it be? Share your question in the comments below. I'd love to hear your thoughts! If you enjoy conversations about great literature, literary history and the fascinating lives of writers, please consider subscribing to The Scholar's Armchair for more interviews with leading authors and scholars. #EmilyBrontë #WutheringHeights #DeborahLutz #BrontëSisters #VictorianLiterature

  4. Oct 11

    The Exile Who Changed English Culture | Dr Annalisa Nicholson

    What happens when exiles create a cultural world of their own?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Dr Annalisa Nicholson of King’s College London about her fascinating book, A Salon-in-Exile: Hortense Mancini and the French Diaspora in Restoration London. Nicholson reconstructs the remarkable intellectual salon established in London by Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, one of the most celebrated and unconventional women of the Restoration. After fleeing an unhappy marriage and eventually settling in the England of Charles II, Mancini helped create a cosmopolitan meeting place where French and European exiles mixed with Restoration London's cultural elite. The salon became a space for conversation, literature, performance, gambling, intellectual exchange and experimentation, bringing together different nationalities, religions and ways of life. We discuss Mancini's extraordinary life, the culture of the seventeenth-century salon, her relationship with fellow exile Charles de Saint-Évremond, and the ways in which displacement could create unexpected opportunities for freedom and creativity. We also explore the salon as a kind of alternative cultural space, comparable in some respects to other literary coteries and intellectual circles, where conversation, play and sociability could allow ideas and identities to be explored more freely.At the heart of our conversation is a larger question: does exile simply remove people from centres of cultural influence, or can exiles create new cultural centres of their own?LINKS📚 Annalisa Nicholson, A Salon-in-Exile: Hortense Mancini and the French Diaspora in Restoration London https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/saloninexile-9781350415775/🎓 Dr Annalisa Nicholson – King’s College LondonAnnalisa Nicholson's university profile https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/annalisa-nicholson☕️Buy me a coffee! http://www.buymeacoffee.com/drjohnburton#RestorationEngland #HortenseMancini #LiteraryHistory #EarlyModernHistory #CharlesII #FrenchHistory #WomensHistory #Exile #LiterarySalons #RestorationLiterature #CulturalHistory #AnnalisaNicholson

  5. Oct 4

    A History of England in 25 Poems

    Can poetry act as a time machine into the past? What can a poem reveal about history that archaeology, chronicles and official records cannot?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Professor Catherine Clarke about her fascinating book A History of England in 25 Poems, which tells more than 1,300 years of English history through poetry.Beginning with Cædmon’s Hymn and travelling through medieval England, Chaucer, Thomas Wyatt, the Great Fire of London, Victorian Britain, the World Wars and into the present day, Catherine explores poetry as something more than a literary record. A poem can preserve traces of another person’s thoughts, emotions and imagination, allowing us to enter something of the psychological world of people who lived centuries before us. Her book describes poems as portals into the past, connecting us with the experiences and imaginations of those who lived through history. We discuss whether poetry can really be used as historical evidence, how poets have helped to create and challenge ideas of England and Englishness, who gets to tell a nation’s story, and what voices from the margins can reveal that conventional histories sometimes leave behind.We also explore some of the remarkable poems Catherine has chosen, from Cædmon and The Battle of Maldon to Chaucer, Wyatt, Tennyson, Edward Thomas, W. H. Auden, Geoffrey Hill and Grace Nichols.Catherine Clarke is Professor at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and Director of the Victoria County History of England. LINKS📖 Catherine Clarke, A History of England in 25 PoemsPublisher: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461263/a-history-of-england-in-25-poems-by-clarke-catherine/9781802069624Buy me a coffee! ☕️ http://buymeacoffee.com/drjohnburtonIf you enjoy conversations about literature, history and the ideas that have shaped our culture, subscribe to The Scholar’s Armchair for more interviews with leading writers and scholars.#CatherineClarke #EnglishHistory #Poetry #EnglishLiterature #History #CaedmonsHymn #Chaucer #LiteraryHistory #TheScholarsArmchair

  6. Sep 27

    Eight Women Who Rewrote Their Lives | Prof Anne Fernald

    How much freedom do we really have to write the story of our own lives?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Anne E. Fernald about her new book, Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.With Virginia Woolf and 'A Room of One’s Own' as a guiding presence, Anne tells the stories of eight remarkable twentieth-century women: Margaret Wise Brown, Eileen Chang, Vera Brittain, Muriel Rukeyser, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Una Marson, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Dorothy Arzner.We talk about what it means to find your own voice, why the stories we inherit can shape the lives we believe are possible, and what gives someone the courage to cross the threshold into a different kind of life. We also discuss wandering and uncertainty as creative forces, the freedom to change your mind, the relationship between art and political commitment, and the obstacles that remain even for women determined to make lives and careers on their own terms.Underlying our conversation is a question that reaches beyond these eight women: how far can any of us become the authors of our own lives, and how can we make possibilities available to those who come after us?LINKSHer Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art — Beacon Press:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/816935/her-own-voice-by-anne-e-fernald/Anne Fernald:https://annefernald.com/If you've enjoyed this video you can buy me a coffee at: https://buymeacoffee.com/drjohnburton

  7. Sep 20

    Charles DICKENS and Victorian Psychology

    Was Charles Dickens not only one of the great novelists, but also one of the great psychologists of the Victorian age? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John talks to Tyson Stolte, Associate Professor of English at New Mexico State University and author of Dickens and Victorian Psychology: Introspection, First-Person Narration, and the Mind. We explore a side of Dickens that is often overlooked: his fascination with consciousness and the workings of the human mind. How much can we really know about ourselves? What happens when the person experiencing a life becomes the person who later tells its story? How does memory shape our sense of identity? And what can novels such as David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood tell us about the Victorian struggle to understand the relationship between mind and body? We also discuss Dickens’s religious beliefs and the increasingly materialist science of the nineteenth century. For Dickens, questions about consciousness were ultimately bound up with a much larger question: if the mind is simply a product of the physical brain, what happens to the possibility of the immortal soul? It’s a conversation about Dickens, psychology, memory, introspection, religion and one of the most enduring questions of all: can we ever truly know ourselves? LINKS ☕️ Buy me a coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/DrJohnBurton 👨‍🏫Tyson Stolte — New Mexico State University: https://english.nmsu.edu/people/tyson_stolte.html 📖 Dickens and Victorian Psychology: Introspection, First-Person Narration, and the Mind — Oxford University Press: https://academic.oup.com/book/44026

  8. Sep 13

    The Curious Relationship Between Modernism and Religion | Prof Annarose Steinke

    What happens to religion in poetry when belief itself becomes uncertain? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Professor Annarose Steinke about her book Religious Culture in Modernist Verse: Form, Belief, and Twentieth-Century Poetics. Steinke explores the fascinating and often unexpected ways that twentieth-century poets continued to draw upon Christian imagery, ritual and liturgy, even as traditional religious belief was being questioned and transformed. Our conversation takes us from Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein to T. S. Eliot, Basil Bunting and Thom Gunn. We discuss saints and sacred images, prayer and distraction, grief and memorial, and the curious relationship between poetic and religious forms. Why did these poets continue to return to the language and practices of religion? Can poetry make the invisible present? And can a poem, in some sense, do the work of a prayer? Annarose F. Steinke is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where her research focuses particularly on modernist literature and poetry. Links: 👩🏻‍🏫Professor Steinke's university profile: https://www.unk.edu/academics/english/facultystaff/index.php 📖Religious Culture in Modernist Verse: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/religious-culture-in-modernist-verse-9781978771369/ ☕️If you enjoyed this video you can buy me a coffee!: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/DrJohnBurton Thanks! 🫶

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Great minds on the greatest ideas: Conversations with scholars on their area of expertise for a general audience. Less like a lecture, more a conversation with an expert. Check us out on YouTube!

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  • Creator
    Dr. John Burton
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. John Burton
  • Show Website
    The Scholar's Armchair

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